Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Barney Cooney and I became fast friends in the four years we served here together in the federal parliament. I would often meet him in the most unlikely place, in the gym, and I would receive long lectures and long advices about what Labor's policy ought to be. These long lectures and advices repeated what he told the caucus, being probably the most inveterate question asker in the Labor caucus between 1998 and his retirement in 2002 that I can remember. Barney lived in my electorate, in Shoobra Road in Elsternwick. His son Justin I know well, and Lillian as well. After his retirement, we remained fast friends on the telephone and sometimes meeting for coffee.

He was, as the member for Sydney described him, a very kind, warm person, with never a nasty word, even if you had political disagreements. I think the story that Amanda Vanstone told in the Fairfax press in an obituary for him was very typical of the kind of gentle but persistent Melbourne barrister that he was. There was a hearing where the Law Society appeared. He gently got them to commit themselves to how great they were and their commitments to this and that. He had a witness who he saw sitting at the back of the room who had been badly treated by them. After drawing them out fully, as a smart barrister would, he then got this witness to come up to the head table and asked them questions about what they'd really done to her. It was very, very effective, and it obviously impressed former Attorney-General Vanstone very much.

The commonality that Barney and I had was a very strong commitment to international human rights. The more I pushed that, the more he liked it. As I said, we became close friends. He was a strong supporter. I was very grateful for his advice. I was grateful for, as the member for Isaacs said, his counsel—his wisdom, his knowledge and, sometimes, his attempts to redirect you away from a certain course towards another in order to achieve the same end in a different way.

I will greatly miss him. I pass on to his family the condolences of my wife, Amanda Mendes da Costa, who served at the bar with Barney and also had great affection for him. Barney was a great Labor senator, a person who, as the member for Isaacs said, used the committee system in a way that few of the very ambitious people who aspire only to be ministers in this place ever understand. You can achieve things, as he did, through the parliamentary system, through the committee system. It's slower and it's more grinding, and you need to be persistent, as Barney was. But you can achieve things. He's a perfect example of a great senator, a great parliamentarian, who managed to achieve change for the better in Australia by using the system that he knew and that he'd perfected through his experience as a great Melbourne barrister.

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